Bruce Logan
Simon Wilson has given us a list of place names, from ‘Auckland’ to ‘New Zealand’, that the enlightened would replace. He has missed the most obvious and unsafe place name, ‘Christchurch’. Surely that should be the first to go. The name reeks of our colonialist and discriminatory religious addiction. A decaying addiction that still corrupts the freedom of self-realisation.
At last we are rejigging our past to reflect the glorious paganism of the Maori before they were corrupted by that dreadful Gospel preached by that awful hypocrite Samuel Marsden. He had no idea how chatter of sin and salvation can so easily undermine one’s self-esteem. How fortunate we are to have had the prophetic Trevor Mallard in Parliament to democratise the parliamentary prayer. There should be a statue for him in the Parliament grounds. Right in front.
It’s essential that our non-racist, non-sexist, and progressive society of unrestrained freedom be enjoyed by all. We know now that human dignity is not a consequence of having been created male and female in the image of God described in some old-fashioned book. We are the makers and shapers of our own dignity unburdened by the prejudice of those dreadful colonialists. At last, the insightful chant of those young pioneers of liberation is coming to fruition. “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho! Western culture’s got to go!”
That hoary old patriarch King Lear was wrong. We can get something out of nothing after all. Every man his mistress and every woman her master as we celebrate our androgynous liberated selves. We always knew that the ‘Enlightenment’ really meant ‘what I like’.
We know now that the cause of evil is not the frailty of human free will. It’s the deep-seated institutionalised prejudice promulgated by the mysterious patriarchy and its elusive preoccupation with character, its motivation and intent of which we are all victims.
We are not chronological snobs. There is no possibility of error. We are liberated diversophiles who know how to include and tolerate all those who believe. The past is a foreign country ruled by slave traders, capitalists, racists, sexists, homophobes, and religious bigots.
At last we can experience the liberty of untrammelled human rights. For too long human rights were hamstrung by their submission to the tyranny of duty. They are not handed down to us from someone on high. They are our universal invention and we make them up as we go along. My identity, my body is mine alone.
At last, we can return to the tribal culture from which we came. The revelation of multiculturalism is freedom’s womb giving birth to that glorious trinity of diversity, equality, and tolerance. That old idea of freedom demanding restraint and the kind of character-driven by a guilty conscience has to go. French misogynists were not usually right about anything, but Rousseau was. We must be liberated from the chains of patriarchal bondage.
My life matters insofar as I am a member of my tribe. I am first of all a tribalist rather than a citizen of any nation. But at the same time, I am a citizen of the world community. The we of nationhood has been the cause of nearly every war in the last 200 years.
We are an entitled generation, at last, discovering the innocence of those in the past who weren’t corrupted by colonialism, slavery’s root. We must return to that oneness of mountains, rivers, and trees. We should celebrate that Avatar 2 is being filmed in New Zealand. Gaea is a gentle Goddess in spite of earthquakes. A statue for the new cathedral. Christchurch could become Gaeaton. It’s built on a swamp anyway.
And in the words of that immortal bard John Lennon, ‘Imagine, there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace.’
Nothing to die for and nothing to live for either. Having changed every name and cut down every statue we will be free to consume each other. Freedom destroyed in the name of freedom.
